A wide swath of Canada’s political, corporate and media elite want Canada turned into what former senator and constitutional scholar Eugene Forsey once called “a boneless wonder.” And they are fast achieving their goal.

This country, the world’s second-largest in geographic size, is now already acknowledged to be its second-most decentralized federation, second only to Switzerland.

In keeping with the world-wide market mania of the last two decades, Canada’s dominant political and economic ideology demonizes government and the state except as a tool of social control, defence and war.

Driven by the bully pulpit of corporate think tanks and right-wing politicians, the push is on to shrivel, if not dismantle, all the achievements of Canada’s last half-century and more of nation-building.

From equalization to medicare, from unemployment insurance to collective bargaining, from affordable housing to pensions and from social programs to quality affordable education, all are supposedly crippling distortions of that pinnacle of human intellect and success — the untrammelled free market. And so all must be downsized or abolished.

Here’s a sampling of the perceived economic and social wisdom of a few of corporate Canada’s philosophers:

“’Over-equalization’ weakens the economies of poorer provinces (because) the rich flow of funds … into recipient provinces boosts government spending, pulls resources away from the private sector and politicizes the economy,” says the Fraser Institute.

“Subsidizing poorly-performing parts of Canada is in truth a policy of refusing to make people face the consequences of the poor policy choices they have made over the years,” says Brian Lee Crowley, president of the Macdonald Laurier Institute.

Here’s a lament from Peter Holle, president of the Frontier Centre for Public Policy: “Someday they (the federal government) will recognize what huge cost (equalization) is increasingly imposing on Canada’s competitiveness and prosperity.” (And abolish it entirely, one assumes.)

There is another side to this argument, the side that created the strong, united, prosperous and progressive nation Canada was between the end of the Second World War and the triumph of market ideology in the 1980s.

The 1940 Royal Commission on Dominion-Provincial Relations, otherwise known as the Rowell-Sirois report, was established in response to the terrible ravages of the Great Depression. It pioneered the concept of sharing national wealth.

This extract from Volume Two is as true today as it was 73 years ago:

“The quality of education and welfare services is no longer a matter of purely provincial and local concern. In Canada today, freedom of movement and equality of opportunity are more important than ever before and these depend in part on the maintenance of at least minimum national standards for education, public health and care of the indigent.

It is the lack of a strong social safety net — not excessive government ‘interference’ — that creates market distortions and economic inefficiency.

“The most economically distressed areas are the ones least capable of supporting those services and yet are also the ones in which the needs are likely to be the greatest. Not only national duty and decency, if Canada is to be a nation at all, but equity and national self-interest demand that the residents of these areas be given average services and equal opportunities …

“National self-interest demands it because the existence of areas of inferior education and public health standards affects the whole population and creates many grave and dangerous problems. More fortunate areas cannot escape the pressure on their standards and the effect on their people; in this case prevention, in both fiscal and human terms, is much cheaper than the cure.”

A 1992 paper prepared by two economists for the Ontario government makes the identical case even more strongly, turning the argument of market fundamentalism on its head by establishing it is the lack of a strong social safety net — not excessive government “interference” — that creates market distortions and economic inefficiency.

Dalhousie University’s Lars Osberg and Carleton University’s Allan Maslove wrote that national standards in Canada’s (now largely dismantled) social programs are not only an aspect of Canadian identity. Twenty years ago, they were considered vital to the maintenance of the economic union’s efficiency because they were — and still are — a major factor in determining labour force mobility.

“Removing quality of life uncertainties frees people to make the optimum job choice, in much the same way that eliminating economic uncertainties frees business to choose the optimum location from a market standpoint,” the economists wrote.

“What each of us actually cares about is the particular taxes and government services that we personally are likely to pay and to consume. In considering whether to take a job elsewhere, with higher pay, the parents of school-aged children are interested in whether schools will be of comparable quality.

“People with health problems want to know if they can expect a comparable quality of medical care if they move. And those whose income prospects are uncertain will be more likely to move to a better job elsewhere if the safety net of social assistance offers a comparable level of security should things not turn out as well as hoped.”

Writing 21 years ago, Osberg and Maslove already saw the handwriting on the wall for Canada’s social safety net and equalization. They went on to warn of the negative and perverse effects it would have on the the strength and resilience of the Canadian economy and Canadians’ quality of life.

They accurately predicted that equalization alone — even in its robust beginnings with a 10-province standard — would not be sufficient to avoid wide variations in the quality and availability of social services and education among the provinces.

The two economists argued that if equalization was to be the sole tool for engendering interprovincial equity, the standard of services in poorer provinces would decline and their citizens would migrate to wealthier provinces for better services. That would lead wealthier provinces to question why they should support equalization in the first place.

Their work was prophetic. Canada’s social and economic dominos continue to fall.

Once national standards disappear, they warned, provincial governments “have both the incentive and the means to follow ‘beggar thy neighbor’ policies in health and social programs.”

Osberg and Maslove also turned the argument of today’s market supremacists on its head. They insisted that national social policy is not only not an unproductive drag on the economy, it is an integral part of a robust national labour market. If national standards do not exist, migration decisions will be influenced by factors irrelevant to economic productivity and efficiency.

“If business can demand national standards in things like nuts and bolts, computer interfaces, grades of wheat and skills of welders, what is so different and threatening about national standards in social policy?” the economists asked.

Good question. It’s not likely that question will even be acknowledged by free-market cultists. Widespread indifference to the return of ancient feudalism’s division between the fabulously rich and the destitute poor means the middle — democracy’s bulwark — will disappear.

Frances Russell is a Winnipeg-based freelance journalist and author. She is a regular contributor to the Winnipeg Free Press and is the author of two award-winning books. Her career has spanned nearly 50 years and includes time as a reporter and political columnist with the Winnipeg Free Press, the Vancouver Sun, the Globe and Mail and United Press International, in Ottawa. She also provided occasional columns and commentary for CBC-TV, CBC Radio, CBC Newsworld, the Ottawa Journal, the Edmonton Journal, the Toronto Star, Canadian Forum Magazine and Time Canada.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by all iPolitics columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of iPolitics.